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April 12, 2014

Mike Schmidt Is Pro-Robot Ump!

I think the umpire at home plate should not call balls and strikes. I think they should have a force field over home plate and if the pitcher throws and the ball touches the force field a little bell goes off and it's a strike. That would expand the strike zone to the point where the hitters would now have to swing the ball, which would shorten the game.

The umpire needs to be at home plate for the safe and out calls at home plate and foul balls and fair balls and basically to run the game but we're going to see at some time – my guess is within the next 10 years – that you'll see the balls and strikes just like the line calls in tennis.

You'd think it would be something very easy to do with what they can do electronically in our world today.

11 comments:

In Wiffle Ball we used a lawn chair as a catcher/ump hybrid. If a pitch hit the chairback, seat, or arms, strike. If it missed or hit the legs, ball. Say what you will about things like batters being different heights, but there was never an argument!

Dealing with the fallibility of umpires has always been part of the game for players, fans, and managers.

To me the robo-ump destroys a lot. It's like saying that all ball parks should have the same dimensions to even things out--no more hitters' parks, no more pitchers' parks, no more monster, no more short porch. Then statistics will no longer have anomalies, and you can compare apples to apples.

But right now, teams have to be built around the unique parks they will be playing in--and similarly the players have to deal with human umpires with all their individual peccadilloes.

Just because it's technically feasible for robo-ump to call a perfect game does not mean that the game would thereby be improved. On the contrary, second -guessing, hometown outrage, scorn, Bronx cheers, rhubarbs, barroom rants, arguments are integral to the pleasures of baseball for the fan, and learning individual umpires is part of a player's education.

Surely over 162 games the missed calls will tend to balance out, for and against a team. (That's no consolation to a team who loses because some umpire gave a batter four strikes to work with. But it's not an argument for a robo-ump either.)

I can buy that it's part of the fun of the game that every umpire seems to have their own individual strike zone. And I know those were the kind of details that Schilling kept in that fat notebook of his. What I hate though is that built into that human element is the shrugging acceptance that umps can essentially be corrupt.

No, no one ever uses the word "corrupt," but for me it's almost the same thing. Every fan is aware of (and never seems bothered by) this facet of the game where rookies have to "prove themselves" to get a fair strike zone. (The flip side is the popular vet pitcher who gets the mile-wide zone.)

Worse is the idea that you have to "make friends" with various umpires so that they treat you fairly. And if you "show up" the umpire, then it's an accepted idea that the umps have every right to show you who's boss.

Every time Ortiz bitches about a call, I think about this. The consensus always seems to be that he better cool off or the ump may screw him over for the rest of the game. Or maybe the ump would retaliate against whoever is the Sox pitcher that day.

Heck--and this is a concern that Don and Jerry have even vocalized during broadcasts--if a player or team gets a "reputation" for complaining, umps as a whole may be more inclined to generally screw them over in the future.

The mind-boggling thing isn't that people commonly bring up such chain-reaction scenarios as possibilities--but that when they do consider such things, they never question them. It's never, "That's so messed up!" It's always, "The Sox had better be careful! Ortiz, please be nicer next time!" Perhaps it's people's natural deference to authority that explains this.

I can just hear players screaming that the IT guys must have screwed up the strike zone againand storming the sub-basement hideaway where those guys will lurk, like IT guys do.... Wouldn't you rather have a big, beefy, macho, authoritarian, stand-no-guff man in blue take the heat?

What I hate though is that built into that human element is the shrugging acceptance that umps can essentially be corrupt.

No, no one ever uses the word "corrupt," but for me it's almost the same thing. Every fan is aware of (and never seems bothered by) this facet of the game where rookies have to "prove themselves" to get a fair strike zone. (The flip side is the popular vet pitcher who gets the mile-wide zone.)

Worse is the idea that you have to "make friends" with various umpires so that they treat you fairly. And if you "show up" the umpire, then it's an accepted idea that the umps have every right to show you who's boss.

MH makes a ton of sense - he really makes the hidden dynamics visible. It is corruption.

During Friday night's game, Dave O'Brien mused that this season Derek Jeter will set an all-time low for caught looking, because what umpire is going to call him out on strikes in his last season. Really??? They are going to change the rules for a player, even knowing the outcome of games might be at stake?

"Mr. Williams will let you know when it's a strike," or whatever that quote is: just as awful.

We used to hear about "the Greg Maddux strike zone" all the time. GAH!

I think M Horse has just the word for it, it is corruption. And just because it's been tolerated in the past, well, so were steroids, and everyone's very hot to get rid of them.

I don't have an opinion on so-called robot umps one way or the other. Personally, I'd rather see human umps do their jobs to the best of their ability with the occasional mistake. But why MLB and fans tolerate and encourage the wildly uneven application of rules, I cannot understand.

I just wanted to add that I too enjoy the theatrical aspect of having a human ump there, especially when they really get "into it" when there's a dominant pitching performance.

But I also hate all the bad calls--the cumulative effect of which surely affect games' outcomes more than any other individual plays.

What about a compromise between accuracy and tradition? What if the homeplate ump wore an earpiece and still did the strike/ball calls (which are obviously being fed to him)? And I assume there are other reasons besides balls/strikes for a human to still be back there, so it's not like their presence would be completely superfluous.